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Discussion (53 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Like Molyneux's last games all being centered around trash exploitative mobile game mechanics.
Spector being the progenitor of 2 entire very rich single player genres with Thief and DeusEx it just feels completely the wrong person to be working on some coop online game that got support ended after 2 months. It's just not what a talent like him should be working on and the business mechanics don't align with his strengths.
Would have made a lot more sense to be doing a budget IMSIM, there is an audience there on PC for for these sort of games at a visual fidelity level a small team can accomplish rather than trying to make something more mainstream with a reliance on online.
I find the notion of auteur "game developers" somewhat puzzling. I say that as someone who played, and still play, these games when they came out. Most of these guys haven't made great games in a long, long while. Obsidian's only decent game in a long while is Pentiment, and that for all intents was a passion project.
I feel as the industry ages out the "fresh new excitement cutting edge" environment you thrived in is now mainstream. It's procedural and boring so you feel forced to churn out another "cutting edge" mainstream thing. You burn out trying to blend in with the furniture.
Perhaps if you keep finding new cutting edge things to do you can stay on top but most people are ensnared by their zeitgeist.
> "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/11/12/deus-ex-2
In particular I'd say right now it's really hard to look at any given game that has commerical potential and spot the winners across any size category. There is a glut of supply that tends to exentuate the hit driven nature of making games as gamers latch onto the next viral success whilst at the same time making it hard to have multiple hits. Back in the day competition was less and money could buy a scope and technology advantage. Both of which are ideas that no longer really apply.
Like look at Hidetaka Miyazaki's work on Demon's Souls and then go and tell me that the leader doesn't matter.
Hard to get the mid ground, they rarely recoup the costs.
I'm sure his bank account disagrees. All games are, ultimately, commercial ventures with the express purpose of making money. It's why they are so hard to classify as "art". There are a select few auteur driven passion projects that can transcend this now and again, but they are generally extreme outliers among even their creator's careers, let alone the industry as a whole.
Deus Ex is Ultima X, it picked up and relit the torch that Ultima IX dropped in a puddle.
I also enjoyed lots The excavation of Hob's Barrow and also finished Broken Sword 5. Monkey Island series are great.
The CV from Spector is great, btw.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3341000/Thick_As_Thieves/...
There are exceptions that prove the rule, but I do think there’s something about the quality of a person’s output that changes as they age. Maybe it’s brain elasticity. Maybe it’s that life changes as we age and things like kids or aging parents or health take precedence.
Regardless, I wish we had a better structure to more gracefully allow the greats to move into teaching or mentorship rather than expecting them to continually release the next great thing. Sports is a good model due to the physicality, if a little on the ruthless end of the spectrum. Most great athletes peak at 26-32 and the ones that continue can still do amazing things but they move into a different role; captains, coaches, commentators, whatever.
Maybe that should apply to games, coding, etc.
What a legacy.
I would argue it has way more depth and complexity than the majority of modern games. There were so many systems that interacted in interesting ways, and so much player freedom that the devs actually accounted for. Just endless stories of "I tried this bizarre thing that I thought nobody would think of, and the devs actually wrote unique dialogue for this situation".
It's also a bit of a mess and cobbled together, but in a beautiful way.
Some games just impact me in a way that others don't, and I rarely go back to games for that reason. Another example is that I've probably spent longer thinking about Thomas Was Alone than I actually spent playing it, it's a very short game that had a tremendous impact on me.
Deus Ex was the right game at just the right time, and somehow the sequels never recaptured that magic. For me, a large part of that was precisely the promise the game had, even if upon technical breakdown it didn't really deliver on those promises. The idea that you were affecting and interacting with the world. The idea that you had a full gamut of options of how to achieve a mission. These were promises that weren't well kept, but they kept the imagination alive.
Yes, looking back at the game in hindsight - having since played games like Morrowind - Deus Ex seems relatively linear in comparison, but at the time it felt completely different to any FPS I had played before.
I feel like it's actually a sign of a good game. A masterpiece that relies on my imagination just hits different.
It doesn't work anymore in modern mods I've played through; they've patched it.
I hope he figures out how to make it once it finally becomes possible, and comes back!
Will Wright said this at the closing his 2005 Spore GDC talk:
>A lot of the games I've worked on, I've always had obstacles -- usually trying to convince other people it's a good idea, or it'd be sellable, or whatever. When I look back on this idea, the biggest obstacle I truly had was making myself believe that we could build the game. My own imagination was the biggest bottleneck. Once I truly believed that this game was buildable, it proved to be actually quite easy to con- I mean, to persuade the rest of my staff and the executives and everything that we could do it.
>So I'd encourage all of you: if you've got some totally weird idea that is just so far outside the box that you think there's no way that would work -- go back occasionally and revisit those ideas. Because you just never know where they might lead.
>-Will Wright, The Future of Content, GDC 2005, 1:00:57
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6YWVTURU&t=3657s
I bet that thanks to AI, he is more likely to come back and make more great games.
To Downvoters: After thinking about this in the age of AI, I now think that game developers have no choice but to use AI in developing their games for this reason:
Let's say he comes back tomorrow and the game studio announces a new game that is to release in two years or so.Do you really think they won't use AI to meet the deadline quicker and avoid any delays? I bet they will. As long as competition exists, there will always be someone else using AI to compete.
But of course it is damned if they use AI (no delay). Damned if they don't use AI (and risk delays).